Two Much of a Good Thing
by Rowena of Naxen
Summary: Alan finds and loses the two people he loves. / A ficlet for every day of August. Written for 31 days on livejournal. Alan/Liam and Alan/Lianne
1. Unexpected Visitor

**I'm now starting a new series for the August 31_days challenge on livejournal. Each day of the month has a prompt, and you try to write a ficlet for each prompt and post it on the same day. I'm going to be away for a week, so I may not be able to post every day, but I'm going to try.**

**I've chosen to write about Alan of Pirate's Swoop and the two people he loves. There will be slash in future chapters. If that bothers you, just don't read them - I will post a warning chapters with slash.**

**Prompt for August 1****st****: healed by wind and sun**

"Why the sudden need to get away, Alan?"

He looked sharply at his sister. "What do you mean?

"Well, it's only been a few years since you got your shield. I thought Jonathan would be keeping you busy, or that you would want to be kept busy." Aly paused, waiting to see if he would divulge any details. "And then you show up here for your first visit in years and when I ask why, you tell me you just needed to get away."

"I needed some time apart from…certain people. It's very calming here. Makes it easier to think." Alan turned his face to the sea, let the morning sun touch his face as the wind chilled the two standing on the rocks.

"By certain people you wouldn't mean Lianne, would you?"

"I really don't want to talk about it, Aly."

His twin look slightly affronted, but she had matured from the fourteen-year-old who would have begged and prodded until he told her all his secrets, so she turned and left him alone.

Alan sighed and sat on the rocks, his feet dangling just over the water, and tried to let the sun and the sea breeze calm him.

Aly was half right – he did need to get away from Lianne, but she wasn't the only one, and he wasn't even sure why that was suddenly true.

All Alan knew was that even under the balm of the morning sky, his hear was no longer truly his own.


	2. Wherever You Go, I'll Go Too

**Wherever you go, I'll go too**

_summary: Alan really should have known this already - wherever he goes, Liam will go too._

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters**

**A/N: Prompt #2 for 31_days: "over the world and under the world"**

**Warning: slash**

When Alan was sent on border patrol, right after he was knighted, Liam was too. The order wasn't so shocking for Alan, but it should have been for the prince – he'd have expected Their Majesties to keep their son near the palace.

When troops were assembled up north to end the war with Scanra once and for all, Alan was assigned to line up right behind the foot soldiers. Liam was too, surprisingly – Lord Wyldon usually managed to bend orders when it came to keeping his king's children safe.

After the war, Alan requested leave to visit his sister in the Copper Isles and was granted it. When he returned, he was assigned to a tiny post in the west, where most of the knights stayed in a crumbling castle, the fief name forgotten, and he worked with the few others at building it back up. Liam did too.

He didn't stay there for very long, and when Alan left the relative chill of the northwest and learned to live out of a tent in the Great Southern Desert, Liam was there too.

"Your orders should be different than mine," Alan told his friend, entering the prince's tent without announcing his presence. "You should be on duty near Corus, not stuck at small border camps. You should be living at the palace, going to dinners and parties and only fighting when you absolutely have to."

"I probably should, but I don't want to live in the capital. I'm a knight and I'll serve my country as a knight, not as a prince, the way most noble sons do – that's what I told Father the day of my Ordeal."

"And I've only been with the same knights for two assignments, and only a few of them then, besides you. You're assigned to everywhere I go."

"Coincidence," the older man said too easily.

"No," Alan said. "It's too much of a coincidence."

"Are you complaining, then?" Liam raised his eyebrows, questioning.

"No, of course not – I'm just asking you to tell me, honestly, are you asking your father to change your orders to follow me?"

"Wherever you go, I'll go too." Liam told him simply.

"But why?" Alan asked.

"I'm waiting for you to realize." The prince seemed to think this was an obvious fact.

"Realize what?" He was growing tired of Liam avoiding his question.

"This."

When Liam wrapped his arms around the other man, kissing him passionately, Alan did too.

**I forgot to mention in the last chapter, I made a banner for this story! The link is on my profile if you'd like to see it.**


	3. To Go Walking

**Disclaimer: the characters are not mine. Clearly, I'm messing around with them.**

**Summary: Alan compares his two situations. 31_days prompt #3: "walk in empty places" Warning: slash**

**Lianne will be in it more later, I promise!**

Alan felt that he and Liam were always hiding. A quick caress under the table, a heated glance in a crowded room – the time they got to be alone, just the two of them, was rare.

They began taking walks in deserted places, early in the morning or late at night, when everyone around them slept. It was the only time when they could be close, fingers entwined, holding each other the way they wanted to.

Alan remembered walks in the palace gardens with Lianne, where the only limitations placed on them were those of propriety. If he wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her cheek, people would look at them and smile, perhaps cast a warning glance, making sure they were still being proper. The only things whispered about them would be people remarking at how sweet they were together.

If he and Liam were in a crowded place, and Alan were to wrap an arm around the prince and kiss his cheek, they would get looks of shock and horror. The whispers surrounding them would speculate about, shame, and insult them all at once. No one would be smiling at them – no one would even dare to look.

"What's worrying you?" Liam's whisper comes from right next to his ear, his breath deliciously warm. Alan turns in to his chest, rests his head on Liam's shoulder.

"I was just thinking."

"About what?" Liam prods. Alan grins – Liam was never one to let you leave a thought unfinished.

Alan straightens, moving his mouth close to his lover's ear. "About how I'd love to go walking with you in the palace gardens."

**Review? I'd love to hear people's thoughts :)**


	4. It Would Be Different

**Disclaimer: I know you're shocked to hear it's not mine.**

**Summary: Lianne knows it could be different, if only Alan would let it be. 31_days prompt #4: "one day here and the next day gone"**

**Sorry for the delay, but it *was* posted yesterday on Goldenlake, which is where I'm trying to keep to posting on the day of most. I had to rush out of the house and didn't have time to post it on here.**

To Alan, no feeling in the world quite matched up to the joy he felt whenever he saw Lianne. This time, his return to the palace after almost a year spent at different outposts, was especially joyful.

He entered her rooms quietly, having knocked on the door before hand. His heart kicked in to double time at the sight of Lianne, splendid in a light blue dress, laughing in her sitting room. Her eyes widened at the sight of him, and all of the ladies she had been talking to obliged her by going in to the next room, although more than one gave her a glance that suggested they would be listening from there.

Only once they were gone did she turn to Alan. He held out his arms.

"Oh, darling –" She rushed to him, and he held her tightly close. "I've missed you so much," she murmured, muffled against his tunic.

"And I have missed you," he whispered, capturing her face in his hands and kissing her. She trembled, pulled away.

"You shouldn't – we shouldn't – it's simply not proper!" But when he pulled her close again, she didn't stop him from stealing a kiss.

"I missed you so much," he whispered again. "I'm so happy with you. It's—" he stopped abruptly. He had been about to say it was so different from being with Liam, that he had no worries when he was with her, and only caught himself at the last moment.

"It's what?"

"Nothing."

She stepped away from him, walked back to her chair and sat. "You didn't tell me you were leaving."

"I didn't know myself." Her scornful gaze brought him to her side. "I woke up and had the most powerful feeling that I simply needed to get away from here – I had no time to tell anyone. Even Aly didn't know I was going to visit her – I simply showed up."

"Why would you want to leave here? Did you need to get away from me?" Lianne's lip trembled, and although Alan was sure it was at least partly an act, he still felt awful.

"Not you, Lia. Just – everything."

She suddenly seemed not sad, but angry. "Your first holiday since you'd been knighted, and you cut it off by half because you needed to get away? Alan, sometimes I wonder why I keep turning down marriage offers from other men."

He pushed off his knees and sat down opposite her, leaning back in the chair. "You won't marry some knight to old to joust who hasn't the faintest idea what you're interested in, Lianne."

"Well, it certainly doesn't seem as though I will ever marry you."

The words sat between them, stopping all others.

"Lia, I'm sorry. You say you're tired of sitting around your chambers waiting for me to come back from my station – what makes you think it would be any different if you were sitting around the Swoop, or some Corus house, or different chambers in the palace? That's all that would change if we married right now."

For a moment Lianne looked very like her mother. "It would be different," she said.

"No, it wouldn't. Not yet, Lia—"

He thought he saw tears glistening in her eyes. "I had [i]no idea[/i] where you'd gone," she whispered. "The night before, we were at a party dancing and everything was fine. The last I saw you, you were talking to Liam, but you turned and kissed my hand and said you'd come to my rooms the next day after you'd done morning practice, and we'd take a walk." She paused, regaining her composition. "And I wake up and you're gone – nobody knows where you've gone, not your parents, not my parents, not anyone. And the only letter I get from you is after you're back." She pressed a hand to her mouth. "If we were married, you couldn't be like that – here one day, gone the next. If we were married, it would be different."

"Lia—"

Her ladies would comfort her. Alan was sure they'd overheard everything.


	5. She Looks Haughty

**Disclaimer: I still don't own them - applies to all future chapters as well, I'm very tired of typing it and you know it's true.**

**Summary: Sometimes a princess has to resort to drastic measures to make people understand. 31_days prompt #5: "destiny calls and I go"**

****

**I hope Lianne doesn't seem like too much of an icicle. In my mind the Alan/Lianne backstory is that they've been friends almost their whole lives, and around when Alan was a page it turned in to something more, but she had to wait for him to get his shield before he could marry, and finally he has it and he's becoming less committed instead of more. So she's justified in being mad, I think.**

Alan would say Lianne is very pretty. She has classic features and long hair, and when she smiles he feels his heart inflate. She looks a lot like her siblings if you forego the details – thick, black hair; deep brown eyes – but none of them are quite the same.

Kalasin, who Alan only remembers from when she was much younger than she is now, has the look of a healer, a warrior; most of all, the look of a queen. Her face is very like her mother's and yet not quite the same; early disappointments have carved a line in her forehead, but her hands are those of a healer – long, slender, patient, and agile.

Vania looks the most different – though all the princesses are smart, Vania has the look of one who is very clever. If one had to describe her in only a word, it would probably be 'sharp'. The youngest is all angles – in face, in hands; even her hair hangs sharply straight.

Lianne is soft, with a face made for smiling – rosy cheeks, warm eyes, full lips. She is pretty in youth, with the promise of even greater beauty after life feeds her more experiences. It would be so easy to imagine her as a mother, and infinitely difficult to imagine her as a fighter. Her spirit may be strong, but most of the time, she simply looks inviting.

There is a look she has, and in this look one can tell that her spirit really is strong, that she is not soft all the way through. Unlike her sisters, you wouldn't immediately recognize her as a princess if you'd never met her, but in this look it is clear that she is none other than the daughter of Jonathan and Thayet of Conté, and princess of the land of Tortall.

It is this look she is directing at Alan now – after refusing to see him for three days, she stands in the doorway to her rooms, forcing him to stand in the corridor as he tries to explain himself.

She looks haughty.

"I've said I'm sorry a hundred times, Lia—"

"Don't call me that. That nickname is reserved for people who love me – my friends, and my family."

Alan fights down the part of him that wants to tell her if Liam is included in that, her brother would like nothing more than for Lianne – and Alan's feelings for her – to be out of the picture. "I do love you, Lianne," he says instead, softly.

It doesn't affect her. "And yet, you abandoned me." She scoffs.

"I did not abandon you," he started, attempting to remain calm. "You were in no danger without me, nor have we any formal arrangement between us—"

"And whose fault would that be?"

"Dammit, Lianne! I needed time to think away from this gods-cursed palace, with everyone listening in all the time! I needed time to think about you – about us."

Somehow, his yelling did the trick, and she relaxed, melted out of the haughty royal he couldn't recognize as the girl he loved. "Really?" she whispered.

"Yes."

"You'll have to leave again soon."

He looks down. "Yes."

"I wish you didn't have to."

"This is my life right now, Lia. They tell me where to go, and I have to go there. Right now, my job is the most important part of my life."

Her voice quivers. "I thought I was the most important part of your life."

Alan doesn't say anything, because he doesn't want to lie to her. He pushes her in to her room and pulls her close, and this time, it is Lianne who starts their kiss.

**Feedback, be it positive or negative, is very much appreciated.**


	6. If We Were Married

**Summary: Alah has come to despise sentances beginning with "If we were married"...especially when they come from Lianne's mouth.**

**31_days prompt #6: "that we should voyage far"**

In the remaining weeks of his leave, Alan comes to despise sentences beginning with "If we were married"…especially when they come from Lianne's mouth.

"If we were married, it wouldn't be improper for me to only dance with you the whole night," she remarks as he twirls her around the ballroom floor for the first time, an hour after the party had started.

"If we were married, we wouldn't have to say goodnight," she murmurs, and kisses his cheek before bidding him goodnight and shutting the door.

"If we were married, I could talk to you for as long as I'd like," she tells him, having finally escaped from a very dull conversation with a member of the Privy Council.

"If we were married, you wouldn't have to stop," she gasps, and lets him kiss her neck once more before she pushes him away and picks up her embroidery.

"If we were married, no one could tell me I have to leave," she whispers, and then follows the queen and her ladies out of the room.

This is the time he explodes, and tells her she is wrong: some things would be different, but she would still be a princess, and he wouldn't be just a second son, and while some things would be easier, but some things would be much harder.

She knows he is right, has known all along, but she leaves without saying a word.

A whole day lost before she knocks on his door, and he has to leave the next day.

"You know what would make me happier than anything?" Lianne asks, head resting on his shoulder.

"What?" Alan winds his fingers through hers, resting them on his leg, and she does not protest.

"I should love to travel with you."

He straightens, forcing her to lift her head and meet him face to face. "What do you mean?"

She pulls a hand free and runs it through his hair, caressing. "When you leave, to go do your knight work – I should love to go with you."

"Lia, you know you can't. Even if we were married –"

"I know full well I wouldn't be allowed to. I was just musing. Shinko asked me the other day what would make me happiest of all, and I didn't have an answer for her until just now."

"Oh."

"I should love to travel with you. I should love to never leave your side." She grins coyly. "If we were married, you'd have to be here more often."

"Really?" he whispers in her ear, hands tangled in her hair. "Why?"

"Maybe there would be someone else for you to stick around for, too."

Alan thanks all the gods, multiple times, that Lianne hadn't noticed him jump after she said that, or at least that she didn't know why.

Of course she meant children, he reminds himself. Of course she means a baby. Had she married someone else, she could have had one, even two, already. He has seen the way she looks at her niece, the princess Lianokami, whose looks are already taking after her Yamani side. He has seen the light in her eyes when she holds the little girl – of course she was referring to their child.

There is no way, Alan reminds himself, _no way _that Lianne could know about the feelings he harbors for her brother.

**Lianne has to say bye for now...tomorrow it's back to Alan/Liam for a bit, I think. Although I will be gone for a week starting on the 8th, so fics for that week will be posted on the 15th and maybe the 16th.**

**Let me know what you think.**


	7. Neither or Both

**Summary: Alan is tired of leaving his heart in two places at once.**

**31_days prompt #7, "no longer burdened by what's left behind". Mild slash.**

"Lianne wants you to marry her." Liam's voice is like stone.

"Yes." Alan is tired of evading the topic, awkwardly, the way they have been for the last week or so, not including the long ride back to their station. "It makes sense if you think of it from her side," he adds, desperately.

"Yes, it does." Liam sounds very reasonable…too reasonable. Alan would have expected him to get mad, but he counties on, strangely calm. "She's held off being married to someone else for years, telling our parents that you would propose after you got your shield. Now you haven't, and she doesn't know why, and she's just getting older."

It seems so scientific, laid out the way Liam has stated it, and yet his indifference only makes Alan feel worse.

"I don't want to hurt you – either of you."

Liam's eyes are on his face, careful, calculating. "You really do love her."

"Yes." Alan doesn't have to lie to Liam.

If he is shocked by this, he doesn't show it, although from the way the question was posed Alan thinks he was unsure.

"And I love you," he adds, but Liam's face doesn't change.

"Both of us," Liam says, as if confirming it, as though if he says it aloud, he'll somehow understand. "For how long?"

Alan meets his eyes, silently asking: [i]_the truth?_[/i]. And Liam stares right back at him, his reply crystal clear. [i]_Yes._[/i]

"I loved her long before I loved you, Liam."

Still no movement. "And which one of us do you love more?"

Alan searches his head, and his heart, in that long moment. It isn't the first time he's tried to answer that question, but maybe now, with Liam's hazel eyes boring in to his, he'll be able to bring the answer to light. Right now he doesn't even care what the answer is.

"I don't know," he whispers.

"You don't know?" Liam echoes.

"I don't love either one of you more."

Before Alan can think, move, explain, apologize, Liam has his arms around him. Alan returns his hug gladly, though confused.

"I was sure you were about to say you loved her more, and that you'd only wanted to break it off with me before you asked for her hand."

It would be heartless to tell him that situation would be easier, preferable, more accepted – at least that he already knows. It seems cruel, to wish that his feelings for one of them to be lesser, to wish that he could distinguish which one of them he cared for more. And yet he can't deny his desire to pick one above the other, almost as strong as the truth: he can't.

Alan is so tired of leaving half of himself with Lianne and half of it with Liam, no matter where he goes.

Sometimes he thinks he'd rather have neither of them than both.

**See you in a week! Leave me some reviews for when I get back ;)**


	8. A Different Escape

**Summary: When knighthood gets boring, Alan and Liam have their own way to escape.**

**31_days prompt #8, "escape all that waiting and staying". Mild slash.**

Often, boys dreamed of becoming knights because they dreamed of the adventure. Jousting in tournaments, fighting in front lines to defend Tortall, a beautiful maiden to come home to.

Alan, when he became a page, had dreamed of making his mother proud, of forging a destiny for himself that was separate from his twin. And later, he dreamed of Lianne.

Liam's reasons for entering the training for knighthood were different. He wanted to prove he was just as good as Roald. He wanted to show he was an asset to his native country, so maybe he wouldn't have to leave it.

But that was just Alan and Liam. Other boys, normal boys, the sort who would never be involved in a love affair that would ruin them if it were revealed – normal boys, they dreamed of adventure.

This was not adventure, though. Being a knight wasn't hugely exctigin, not if you were just a regular knight, not a hero like Alanna the Lioness or the Giantkiller. There weren't tournaments very often. There were wars even less. And when there were wars, foot soldiers did most of the fighting.

The truth of knighthood was an awful lot of waiting – for orders, for superiors – and even more staying in one place. Hearing of the trouble with bandits one town over from where you're stationed and not being allowed to leave and go help.

Knights were often bored, and tried to find distractions, some fairly harmless – at least to them – and some that became vices.

In that respect, Alan and Liam were lucky. They were never bored – they had their own way to escape the life of a knight.

They had each other.

**I know I originally planned to update this daily, but I only wrote two chapters while I was on vacation and I've fallen behind. However, I promise I will finish this story, even if it doesn't get daily updates.**

**Reviews are very encouraging, you know.**


	9. Contemplation Hurts

**Summary: Three people contemplate. All of them hurt.**

**31_days prompt #9, "the open road, the bitter song, the heavy load". Slash.**

There were many things in his life that Liam did not enjoy. At the top of that list would probably be his family. He loved them, true – but he loathed that they were royalty. He would have been supremely happy to have been born in to one of the lesser noble houses – a commoner family, even. But he had to be the third child of the famous, groundbreaking, radical co-rulers of Tortall.

The second thing he didn't enjoy was what he was. He wasn't quite sure the proper word for it – he'd only ever heard offensive ones – but he knew who he was. He did not desire women. He would never love a girl in more than a sisterly way. But this was not what he hated, no, it was the necessity of keeping it a secret that he despised. (And this only made his despair over being a Conté worse, for he would likely be married off to a lovely foreign princess he could never fall in love with.)

This train of thought inevitably led to Alan. He was kind, handsome, and although soft spoken he could become wonderfully, passionately angry.

A third thing Liam disliked about his life was Alan – that is, Alan's love for Lianne. Alan had cared for her almost as long as Liam had secretly pined after him, and despite his lover's insistence that he loved them both equally, Liam had no doubt that Alan would choose acceptance, a family, and Lianne.

And Liam would be exactly where he was now, with nothing before him but another road, wonderful for contemplation, and leading to another new place.

* * *

It had been a long time since Lianne had last let her fingers run over the strings of the lyre, but she had not forgotten the familiar movements.

The room was empty, quiet, a part of the nursery that was long abandoned. Once it had been the suite that Lianne and Vania shared, but neither had returned after they were moved out of the nursery wing.

It had been – oh gods, it had been sixteen years since she'd moved out of the nursery.

Mithros. Twenty-four. Lianne was twenty-four. Kally had been married by nineteen. Vania, a year younger than Lianne, had already been married for three years. She had given her husband a son, too – another nephew Lianne had never met, and the heir to the Gallan throne.

Lianne had gotten her first marriage offer at sixteen. Thayet had sworn Lia wouldn't marry until she was eighteen, and Alan had sworn he would be the one to marry her.

Thayet loathed seeing her children sent away to marry foreign monarchs. At eighteen, Lianne had confided in her mother, explained that Alan wouldn't marry until after he got his shield, and begged for her blessing. The queen of Tortall had promised this gift to her daughter.

The princess let her fingers slide over the strings, playing familiar chords. Married at twenty-one, not so bad. Unmarried at twenty-four…situation getting desperate.

She'd not even realized what she was playing: the K'mir lullaby Thayet had sang her children to sleep with, when she wasn't away. Images danced before her eyes – a tiny boy with a tuft of Alan's red-blonde hair, a little girl with dark Conté hair and lovely hazel green eyes. Gods, she wouldn't even care what they looked like, so long as they were hers.

Lianne began to sing the old song, and only when her voice warbled and broke did she realize she was crying.

* * *

Possibly the only other time Alan had felt this panicked was when Aly fell from a tree and cracked her skull. This hurt in different ways.

The healer on duty looked up when Alan stumbled in to the infirmary, Liam pale and unconscious in his arms.

"What happened?"

"Snake bite," Alan gasped, out of breath from carrying Liam through the camp. "We were sitting, talking, and it bit him before either of us saw."

The healer nodded, helped Alan lay the prince down on a cot. Alan showed him where it was, just above Liam's knee, and he carefully cut the cloth away and began to clean it.

"He'll be fine," the healer informed Alan. "You should go tell your commander what happened, in case he needs to warn the others about the snakes."

"Oh – yes, of course. I'll go do that." Alan excused himself.

Had he seemed too panicked, too worried? Had the other man suspected Alan of feeling more than just the worry of a friend?

And had he believed that Liam didn't see the snake because he'd been engrossed in their conversation, when in fact he'd been distracted by Alan's lips on his?

He trudged to the commander's office.

Sometimes such large secrets were too hard to bear.


End file.
